The present invention relates in preferred embodiments to call-centers in the art of telephony systems. Call centers are typically hosted by a company or organization for purposes of providing a service to clients, such as technical assistance or catalogue sales and the like. In a typical call center agents are employed at agent stations having at least one telephone, and in many cases other equipment, such as a personal computer with a video display unit (PC/VDU).
Modern call centers, more appropriately termed communication centers, typically have call-switching equipment for directing incoming calls to telephones at agent stations. Computer integration with the switching equipment is now common. This technique is known in the art as computer telephony integration (CTI). In a CTI system a processor is connected to the switching apparatus by a CTI link, and the processor runs CTI applications monitoring and controlling the switching apparatus. PC/VDUs at agent stations may be interconnected on a local area network (LAN) also connected to the CTI processor.
Development of CTI communication centers has made it possible for agents to interact with callers (clients) in more ways than just by telephone. In a suitably equipped communication center, agents can operate with E-mail, Video mail, Video calls, and Internet Protocol Network Telephony (IPNT) calls as well as connection-orientated-switched-telephony (COST) calls. Further to the above, such a modern communication center may also be linked to other communication centers, data bases, and the like in a variety of ways, such as by COST networks, local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), including the World Wide Web (WWW), and various other types of linked-computer networks, such as wireless, satellite based, etc.
A communication center is typically organized to receive and distribute incoming calls to a plurality of agents at the center. There may be a large volume (rate) of incoming calls and a large number of agents. As described above, calls are not limited to COST calls, but may include communications of many other sorts. Call routing to and within communication centers involves processors and software dedicated to directing calls to appropriate agents for processing and response.
Routing of calls, then, may be on several levels. Pre-routing may be done at Service Control Points (SCPs) or other network access points, gateways, or switches at the network level and further routing may be, and generally is, accomplished at individual communication centers.
Distribution and routing of telephone calls within a connection-orientated-switched-network (COST) is not limited to plain old telephony service (POTS)-sourced calls. Calls sourced from other types of networks such as any packet data network, termed herein Data Network Telephony (DNT) calls, may arrive into a COST network through a gateway bridging the two networks. Such gateways are adapted for protocol conversion such that all bridged calls to a COST network are converted to COST format for switching and processing according to appropriate conventions.
In current art call distribution at the network level, calls arriving at a first telephony switch are typically routed on to other switches in the network before ultimately arriving at final destination switches local to or within communication centers. These intermediate switches are often referred to as hops by those familiar with the art. Often these intermediate switches are limited in routing capability with routing performed according to information stored locally at each switch. Such information may simply be the destination of the next intermediate switch on a path to the final destination. As a result, a call may experience several hops on the way to it's final destination. Such hops may require that a call be held in queue while awaiting further instruction, and in any case may entail delays and expensive processing.
An inconvenience associated with such architecture is that it is expensive to maintain such intermediate equipment. Costs associated with maintaining such equipment are generally factored in to direct costs to call-center hosts who lease such equipment for load balancing purposes or other call processing services that may be offered by a host network provider.
What is clearly needed is a method and apparatus for load-balancing of call-processing duties between multiple destination sites and routing of calls that is controlled by each destination site. Calls in such a system could be pulled from network equipment rather than pushed from network equipment. Such a method and apparatus would eliminate or greatly reduce the use of intermediate switching apparatus at or below network level thereby eliminating associated costs. Such a method and apparatus would also allow for less intelligence to be implemented at enhanced first-destination switches such as SCP points.